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June 30, 2008
Peoria Journal Star featured this story, written by Phil Luciano after his trip with Riverside Global Missions to Tanzania.
NDULI, Tanzania -- Fredy Mgoba was heading down a dark path.
The teen had begun hanging around with troublemakers. He had started talking back and otherwise disobeying his parents. He had picked up smoking and other bad habits.
The slide had been going on for years. His parents saw no other way to save their son than send him away.
To Ebenezer Seminary.
"We thought he would change spiritually," says his mother, Eda Mgoba.
They were right. Ebenezer has turned him around, inside-out.
The greatest change we have noticed is the spiritual," says Eda Mgoba, 40.
"He never cared; now, he is sensitive to church. Also, academically, he is doing better."
That is the two-pronged approach of Ebenezer, a new secondary school in the heart of the world's eighth poorest country: push morals along with academics. The school, run by the Tanzania Assembly of God, hopes to create a breed of graduates who will become leaders in a struggling country desperate for hope and direction.
The school has attracted the attention of missions teams from Riverside Community Church in downtown Peoria. The church has made a five-year commitment to build classrooms and expand the school.
"We can make a big impact in a part of the world that needs so much help,"
says Jody Aldridge, Riverside's missions director. "Riverside wants to be part of something that would make such a pointed, direct impact on people's lives."
Tanzania sits on the east coast of Africa. Long a British colony, it has been independent since 1964. Its constitution ensures a separation of church and state; of the 38 million Tanzanians, 40 percent are Christian, 40 percent are Muslim and 20 percent are engaged in indigenous practices, such as ancestral worship.
Work is scarce. About 80 percent of population gets by on subsistence farming; the rest average the equivalent of one U.S. dollar a day. Health problems, including AIDS, have reduced the average life expectancy to 50.
The Tanzania Assembly of God, based in the largest, seaside city of Dar es Salaam, sees a positive future only in the grooming of new leaders. It has begun two schools, the latest Ebenezer Seminary (In Tanzania, "seminary"
means a secondary school with a religious affiliation; the students aim toward careers of many professions, not just in the clergy).
"We want them to have academic excellence, but also moral and ethical excellence," says Barnabas Mtokambali, assistant superintendent of Tanzania Assemblies of God.
Government schools provide basic education, but no spiritual guidance or moral emphasis. Plus, the government can provide schools for only 60 percent of the population, even with parents' paying $600 a year per child for tuition. Many private schools can cost double that but Ebenezer has set its annual tuition at $600, in an effort to lure students from all walks of life.
Ebenezer was sited on 28 acres of rural property in a region called Iringa, in the center of the country, with the goal of drawing students from across the nation. The adjacent village is Nduli, heavy with meager croplands abutting cramped residential hodgepodges of concrete cubes, wooden lean-tos and mud huts.
The school got its start with seed money from the Tanzania Assembly of God.
But early on, through its connections with missionaries worldwide, Riverside Community Church caught wind of the project and liked the focus. Its funding has already built three of the current eight classrooms. Four more are under construction, part with the labor of an early-June Riverside mission team.
In a clearing amid corn and sunflower fields, up pops a quartet of smart, brick, one-story buildings. Half are classrooms; the others serve as offices, dormitories and lavatories. All look nearly as modern as any school you might see in America.
"Whatever we do for the Lord has to be practical, durable, and cost-effective -- but attractive," says Pastor Mtokambali.
In one classroom, a civic teacher has scrawled the blackboard with, "Human rights" -- all lessons are in English, rather than the traditional Swahili, as to better prepare the boys for professions --and under that, "rights to join a trade union," "rights to equal pay " and other tenets of the national constitution. Next door, a history teacher explains Tanzania's social organization of the 18th century. In another classroom, a teacher is filling the board with a fast and furious statistics lesson, and the students work quickly to scribble down everything in their notebooks.
They also take regular Bible classes. Plus, every night before bed, they hold devotions.
Students must maintain a C average, or they flunk the year. They can repeat once; after that, they are expelled.
For lack of funds, Ebenezer has not been able to build lavatories and dorms for both genders; that should occur within the next several years, and the school will become co-ed. Enrollment is now at 99, with 160 planned for next year. Eventually, the school prays, enrollment will hit 1,000.
Not all students arrive born again. Many are Christians, but some are Muslim or non-committed.
Says Pastor Jonas Mkane, regional superintendent of Tanzania Assembly of God, "To transform people from the inside-out, to have a school like this, that is our evangelism."
When Fredy Mgoba arrived at the beginning of the current school year, he maintained his tough attitude, which had no room for spirituality. But when he looked around, he saw other teens who seemed unlike him, especially in their peacefulness.
"I found other young people here who were leading a born-again life. And I was so different from them," Fredy says.
With encouragement from Ebenezer, Fredy turned his life over to Christ.
"I have changed my character," Fredy says. " .. My life was not good. Now that I have accepted Jesus, I am feeling well."
His parents have had a tough time with tuition. His father makes just $30 a month as a self-employed carpenter, barely enough to maintain their tight, concrete-block home, like others jammed onto a hillside amid the stench of open sewers and animal waste.
"It is a sacrifice," his mother says. "The income is not so big. We just save little by little.
They'll have to get even more frugal when Freddy's three younger siblings reach his age and head to Ebenezer.
"God will help us," his mother says.
In mid-May, Ebenezer officials and Riverside representatives broke ground on a new foundation. At the ceremony Pastor Mkane said, "We now start the building of (more) classrooms, all with the support of Riverside Community Church."
Riverside missions director Aldridge stresses that contributors aren't just investing in buildings, but lives of students.
"That have hopes and dreams for the future," she says. "And this school does give them hope."
The buildings' foundations are hewn of stone, hauled by truck from nearby mountains and laid by hand. The process takes about two weeks, after which Riverside representatives arrived to help begin fashioning the rest of the structure.
Other buildings are in the works, one for a new dorm, another for a computer lab. Further funding will be needed before either happens.
Beside Riverside's help, Ebenezer raises money much they way folks in times of need in central Illinois: they hire a band, bring in food and pass the hat. Ebenezer did that three times during this school year, netting $15,000.
Meanwhile, parents try to give beyond the tuition rate. Many extended families will combine together to come up with money.
"They believe in the cause, and they are willing in to sacrifice," Pastor Mtokambali says.
Riverside's Aldridge was impressed by that sacrifice.
"They're not just sitting back, waiting for us to raise all the money," she says. "They're getting it done."
She also marveled at the quick pace of construction, not just on-campus but surrounding the school. The school's growth and stability has prompted the Iringa region to grade and pave area roads.
In addition to the bolstered infrastructure, Nduli residents hope the burgeoning school will bring more construction, custodial and caretaking jobs.
"We are just glad the school is here," says Christian Jairo Kito, chairman of the Nduli village committee.
Through it all, leaders with Riverside and Tanzania Assembly of God continue to relish the progress at Ebenezer Seminary.
"People are being transformed," Pastor Mtokambali said. "It doesn't get any better than that."
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